Hacker News Reader

lsmeducationon Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX staff allegedly had 'Wirefraud' chat group (2022)

These people partied a lot.

lsmeducationon Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC lawsuit says

And higher rent means the valuation of the property goes up. All the incentives are there for them to do this, we just all need to really convince ourselves they would never do such a thing.

...

lsmeducationon Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC lawsuit says

These companies don't care. A lot of these tenant management companies do legal grey area things and landlords pay for it (even though it's begging to be tackled). A good example is they keep tenant blacklists based on scraped court records [1]. Landlords are not supposed to be using stuff like this. I wouldn't have imagined they are price fixing too.

To remain in compliance with the law, OAG recommends landlords and property owners refrain from requesting a potential tenant’s court records and rental histories altogether and cease relationships with tenant screening bureaus who continue to provide court records. Any New Yorker who believes that they have been denied an apartment because of their rental history should submit a tenant blacklisting complaint online with OAG.

In its investigation of Clipper Equity, OAG determined the company had improperly obtained housing court records for 25 potential tenants and then denied housing to seven of those same applicants. The OAG found that Clipper thus violated the law. Clipper also violated city and state Human Rights laws by requiring potential tenants to disclose their marital status. As part of the agreement, Clipper Equity will take the necessary steps to comply with the laws it broke and has committed to ending its discriminatory screening policies.

[1] https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-...

lsmeducationon Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC lawsuit says

And I'd even add that shelter is also one of those things we shouldn't just let the free market sort out (as it has been, and we all see how that's been going).

lsmeducationon Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC lawsuit says

They mostly just look at most recent sales in the area. It sounds simple, but can be bewildering. Just because everyone gobbled up mortgages at low interest rates in 2020, does not mean you can keep pricing houses at 2020 levels. But that's exactly what the housing market keeps doing because they simply care about the last max bid/sale.

lsmeducationon Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC lawsuit says

What about the time component? Holding a market wide price even for a month can demoralize anyone into accepting the rent if you need to move in a month. Time pressure is the multiplier here. You cannot wait out being homeless by being combative against unreasonable rent.

lsmeducationon Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC lawsuit says

At what point can a hostile housing market be considered a discrimination issue (on financial basis)?

lsmeducationon Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence

I'm just using a hash map to count the number of word occurrences

We're gonna need a RICO statute to go after these algos in the long run.

lsmeducationon US immigration enforcement used AI-powered tool to scan posts derogatory to US

Does this even have to be a citizenship issue? The DHS is providing evidence that could alter the judgement of many of these people's cases. Do you have to be American to request that evidence be vetted? If anything, one wrong algo and you can re-open or close buckets of cases at once.

lsmeducationon The negative impact of mobile-first web design on desktop

I like my first worldism. Nothing satisfies me more than a nice coffee and a smug "I cant stand Jira" in the morning. My life is hard.

lsmeducationon Millions of Homes Still Being Kept Vacant as Housing Costs Surge, Report Finds

I hear such conflicting information. For a normal looking new development, I hear that developers are looking to offload asap to recoup the investment. Certain markets in America make it almost seem as if these investors are willing to wait years for rates to come back up.

I don't think Powell gives two fucks about the inflation or unemployment rate. Think he's very interested in cost of living and rent more than anything else. Housing prices barely have moved down at we're on the wrong side over 5%. If housing just thinks its going to wait this wait out and emerge from all of this with this inflated money house has left in tact, while the rest of get slammed by the waves, well ... well I guess I've seen dumber stuff.

Housing needs to get hit for any of this to be worthing anything.

lsmeducationon Ask HN: Need Tips for Web Development Cost Negotiation

This. Stop making websites for your countrymen.

lsmeducationon The casino in your pocket

Our friend has not visited Tiktok lately or played any of the popular online games. These kids are fucking HOOKED 24/7.

lsmeducationon Costco now offering virtual medical care for $29

One could argue that they are in complete control simply because the average patient can never pay the amount the provider bills. So the provider HAS to play ball with the insurer, because good luck getting joe blo American to foot the bill (it's impossible in most cases).

lsmeducationon The casino in your pocket

No, people who took those are just morons.

I'll leave it up to the finance people to come up with interesting instruments to take advantage of these kids. Maybe their bank accounts will just become money market accounts that are tied to leveraged ETFs.

I think abstracting away their real life money into a crypto that is worth 1/10th of the dollar is a good way to go. Make that crypto the exclusive currency for their habits (games, social media) so they have no choice but to convert to it. Easy way to part them from their real earnings that way.

There's easy money here if you are ruthless. If you print your own crypto for their habits, you can effectively act like the US Fed. Just inflate away the value of their coins every time. It's a no brainer.

lsmeducationon The casino in your pocket

You're gonna be able to easily get these kids to lock into all kinds of financing structures in the future.

lsmeducationon Dating app Grindr loses nearly half its staff after trying to force RTO

You can literally solve the housing cost issue if every company guaranteed remote. Live and work anywhere, housing solved.

lsmeducationon Flexport is rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters

The LGBTQ community got these people flying rainbow flags. You're telling me the actual IC community can't even get them to respect this platform? Maybe we have some learning to do.

Covid is over, so unless we start fighting better about this, they are absolutely going to chip away at this.

lsmeducationon Flexport is rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters

Alright, I guess.

In-office had a long time to evolve (half a century I'd say). Remote work kind of only had the COVID years. It's a baby in an incubator. The RTO stuff is kind of like infanticide. So while I understand your perspective, from a war point of view, we have no choice but to protect this baby. They want to cut this experiment off asap. Every little anecdote, every little corporate RTO plan, every little CEO saying shit, is just chipping away at such an infant life.

Give it the same chance the office bullshit had, which was decades. I kind of have to be militant about this. Thanks for the other side, but this baby gotta be kept alive.

If your team sucks, your team sucks. Doesn't matter if you're in office, or out of office.

lsmeducationon Flexport is rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters

Okay, so why do you think that will get better in person? Just curious. Why is "lets meet in person" the go to solution? Look, the RTO people are LOUDER. Period.

They will win this fight if the Remote or Die crew doesn't get loud.

lsmeducationon Flexport is rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters

Okay, you're on team office, got it.

This cardboard box living individual here has such terrible living conditions he longs to breath the air of commercial real estate. Does your bathroom have a stall? No right?

If you rent, your apartment comes with a private bathroom. If you have a roommate, at most one other person shares it with you. That's a pretty private bathroom. You ever been on line to use the bathroom before in the office? Do you think its fun to take a shit with 10 other people in the bathroom with you? lol

Stick a desk in the corner of your apartment and voila, home office.

lsmeducationon Flexport is rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters

It's because they are straight up lying. Like c'mon, you get your OWN PRIVATE BATHROOM when you work from home. The benefits are so obvious, I wonder if the in-office people are legitimate trolls at times.

lsmeducationon Flexport is rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters

The Remote contingent needs to fight harder than the office contingent because the office paradigm has been the dominant paradigm up until now.

In-office work will realistically be seen as a niche when it's all said and done imho. Similar to LAN parties. It's not the way most people want to do things.

Time will tell I guess. But thanks for your anecdote, I hope as time goes on, we begin to see what a niche anecdote it will become.

lsmeducationon Flexport is rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters

I would look at it more like both sides are players. Playas gonna play. The girl plays, the guy plays.

Omar: All in the game

It's not like devs aren't gonna jump ship when the cycle shifts back in the other direction.

Edit:

RTO is a hill I think devs should be prepared to die on. If every dev is not ready to fight for Remote, don't be shocked when it's not even an option as the years go by. Covid gave us a gift, and it's precious. We have to fight to keep it.

Remote or Die.

lsmeducationon Every aspiring writer should read terrible books (2022) [video]

I read the internet regularly, does that count?

lsmeducationon Unreal Engine 5.3

Can development on this engine be learned from zero, or is that a pipe dream?

lsmeducationon Where did the QWERTY keyboard come from?

First, single-stage/two-stage triggers give you (with single-stage) a single smooth press with activation point somewhere in the middle, or (with two-stage) a consistent amount of takeup then a wall that you have to break through to activate the mechanism. So you can have the key pressed and resting on the activation point, and then press it the rest of the way when you want the input to register (for instance, if you're in a game and are waiting for someone to peek around the corner).

This is a cool thing, I’d want that on my mouse triggers also. The problem is that in practice it’ll never be what we want it to be because the distance of switches is too small to make that two stage thing be a thing (we’d need super heavy switches for this to be a thing). Now imagine mouse clicks which are supposed to represent a trigger (we operate as if everything is a hair trigger).

Burst/Single burst is mostly a timing thing at this point. Would be interesting to see it become a force based thing.

Fun ideas though.

lsmeducationon Where did the QWERTY keyboard come from?

It’s interesting how we play the most advanced video games on a peripheral from 1870. Zero innovation on that front, and worse, we’re going even further backward with the mechanical keyboard obsession.

lsmeducationon The Apple $2T Economy

By Allah’s measure. Jesus Christ, it was a joke. Are you sitting there refreshing for responses?

lsmeducationon The Apple $2T Economy

Saudi Arabia